Within most food and beverage markets exists a sector of customers commonly termed the route trade. These are smaller customers, such as corner stores, service stations, restaurants and the like, that order smaller amounts of products on a regular replenishment cycle. Food and beverage manufacturers service these customers with smaller delivery trucks (of up to 14 pallets or less), each truck handling a defined delivery run (route) containing a number of customer drops per route.
The distribution centres service the trucks by assembling pallets of stock units (typically provided in cases) that represent the entire collective orders (or batch) for that particular route, often termed a route load. These pallets typically include a mix of stock units.
Assembly of the mixed stock unit pallets is performed by warehouse picking operators on pallet movers, travelling within the warehouse and building mixed pallets as directed by either a load pick slip or radio frequency commands.
While this type of manual picking methodology is simple and effective, increasingly food and beverage manufacturers are looking for a faster, safer and more efficient means of performing this task.